Editor 's note : CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book , `` Late Edition : A Love Story , '' will be published next month .

Bob Greene recalls Farrah Fawcett 's cheerful greetings to the crew every morning on a movie set .

-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- She would come walking across the lawn just after sunrise .

The days and nights had been long ; everyone else , as darkness turned into dawn , looked wrung out and worn down and weary .

She just glowed .

`` Morning ! '' she would say , flashing that zillion-watt smile , greeting each of us by name .

`` Morning , Farrah , '' we would say back , feeling gray and dull in her presence .

This was at the La Quinta resort near Palm Springs , California , almost 20 years ago . The only piece of writing of mine that was ever turned into a feature film was being shot there . Farrah was one of the female leads .

At least she , and we , thought she was . More on that later .

She seemed to be an awfully nice person . That much I can tell you , from my limited time with her as she made that movie . She did her best to try to make the people around her forget just how all-reaching her fame was . There is a stratum of renown that is separate from the variety that accrues to most performers ; Michael Jackson , who died on the same day as she , knew that type of renown , and so did she . Regardless of the role , she was always destined to be , in the eyes of the public , Farrah . That had to have been both a blessing and an encumbrance .

Most people in show business would do just about anything to possess that level of connection with the people out in the seats -- to move through life having everyone in the world feel they know you . It must be difficult , though , to bury yourself in a fictional part when , inside , you are resigned to the idea that , to the unseen ticket buyers in the darkness , you are , now and always , Farrah .

Any person with whom she had contact , however brief , would remember it for years . She understood that . She was golden , literally ; it was her calling card . At breakfast , on the mornings she would join the crew , we would sit around long wooden catering tables , and there was a what 's - wrong-with-this-picture aspect to the scene . These were mundane meals , and she was anything but . Or that 's what we thought . Farrah ? She was just getting ready to put in a day 's work .

The movie itself -- it was called `` Funny About Love '' -- turned out to be quite forgettable . The male lead was played by Gene Wilder ; the three women in his life were played , as the script was written , by Christine Lahti , Mary Stuart Masterson and Farrah . Everyone on the set seemed to get along , but what do I know ? I 'd never been on another set . After a lifetime of grunted hellos from assistant city editors , this was quite a change . Those dawns on the desert , those cast-and-crew breakfasts , those `` Morning ! `` s from Farrah as she strolled across the grass .

Steve Allen , a luminary in the early days of television and a cogent observer of the world around him , said that when people see a person who is regularly on TV , it is as if the television performer emits a glow . The glow is invisible , yet it 's there . And when a person who once was constantly on television suddenly is n't on television anymore , Allen said , it is as if the glow evaporates . It 's gone .

Maybe he was right -- but with Farrah , the glow endured . It never went away . Another accomplished television performer -- Phil Donahue -- argued that there was no essential difference between Frank Sinatra 's fame and the fame of a local TV weathercaster . Donahue 's point was that you 're either famous or you 're not ; there 's no in-between . If you deliver the weather news on your town 's most popular station , then everyone within the county line knows you . You 're Sinatra .

The theory made a certain sense , but there was that qualitative difference to Farrah 's fame . She could not have gotten rid of it if she had wanted to .

Yet no one always wins . The most blessed among us are subject to hurt . Here is what happened with that movie that was filmed on the desert :

Months after the final scenes were shot , I received a phone call from one of the producers . Opening weekend was approaching .

`` Farrah 's not in the movie , '' he said .

I did n't process the words .

`` She asked for her name to be taken off the credits ? '' I said .

`` No , '' he said . `` She has been cut out of the final film . ''

The powers that be with the authority to make such decisions , the story went , after some screenings in front of test audiences had decided that the movie did n't work well with Farrah in it . So every single one of her scenes had been excised . The movie had been recut as if she had never existed .

Even when you 're golden , it seems , life can blindside you and try to make you feel small . Even when , to those on the outside , it appears that you have everything , it can vanish . Somewhere , in metal film cans on some shelf or other , there are colorful motion images of a beautiful woman doing her job , images the world has never seen . `` Morning ! '' she would call on her way to breakfast . She carried the sunrise with her .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene .

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Bob Greene : Actress Farrah Fawcett worked on the film version of an article I wrote

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He says she was radiant and cheerful in greeting the crew

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She lived with the kind of fame that separates stars from the rest of us , he says

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Greene : She experienced the struggles and disappointments we all face